May 30

It is 11:21 pm and I am sitting outside with Amy by candle light, smoking a cigar and getting caught up on work. It is kinda romantic and kinda pathetic all that the same time. Today was a good day. It was Emma’s 5th birthday so we did what all families do on their daughters 5th, we went bowling. It was great. After that we came home and played outside in the kids pool. Later on some of Emma’s friends came over, who are also our friends and we ate lots of yummy food courtesy of Amy and opened presents. It was fun. I am truly thankful for the community that I have around me in Seattle.

This evening I went to the women and children’s center. It was so good to see my friends there. I hung out with Braxton (4) and Ietza (3). I also got to see my friend Anton (4) before I left as he was at school. One cool thing was that Braxton's mom told her that she had to go and get cleaned up before snack, but Braxton told her she would rather hang with me and skip snack. I am going to miss these kids as I will be not be able to go this summer. I am thankful for what they have given me and what I have been able to give to them.

I also got a call at 11 on Skype from my good friend Jim Walker. He told me he reads my blog. Thanks bro, I am sure you have nothing else going on in your life right now to keep you busy (haha).

Memorial Day Yo!

Good morning. It is good to be up early, before my family as it gives me time just to sit in silence and listen and process the day and life. I have been thinking a lot lately about life and future. It has been good, but I have not really spent much time just sitting with Jesus asking what He things. I have just been going on my own thoughts and feelings, which can also be from Him, but I don't want to not give Him time. Anyway, this morning we just sat and hung out for a bit, if feels like a while since that has happened.

This weekend has been good. I have been able to connect with my good friend Lars and his family. Lars and I met in the summer of 2000 as he brought his church up to Seattle and we hosted them for Mission Adventures. Since then we have been close and he has been a good ear for me to talk to. Our family also went to Fiji with Lars old church in LA and Lars came with me to Cambodia last year. On Friday we went out to the island and hung out in a little 2 bedroom farm house with Lars family. It was great to just get away with Amy and the girls and do nothing but sit with friends and eat. It was great to be able to process our thoughts a bit with them as well. Thanks Rude family.

Today I am looking forward to just putting around the house, as it is Memorial Day, and getting things done that have been waiting to be done for a while now. I am also looking forward to hanging out with good friends as there is a bbq party tonight. And if that were not enough, tonight is game 1 of the NHL Stanley Cup finals between The Ottawa Senators and The Anaheim Mighty Ducks. If you are looking for good hockey and great fights I highly recomend you give the NBA a rest and watch on. Anyway, have a great day and thanks for reading.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Bats at the Billabong

I am sitting in the transit lounge in Taipei on my way home to Seattle to see my girls, emailing and drinking a Tuk Tuk Boom Boom, see Wades blog. I am sad to leave Cambodia, a place that I love dearly. I was talking to my friend Rachel about it on the way to Taipei. I told her that the one thing that I will not miss is the extreme poverty and the sights of people wounded by land mines and children sitting naked on the sidewalk learning how to walk. The ironic thing about this is that these same things are what keep me coming back to Cambodia and what will bring me back to Cambodia as long as Jesus allows.

I have learned a lot from Cambodia. I have learned about generosity, faith, perseverance, laughter and love. I have seen many committed people who care deeply about the justice of others. I have seen a nation destroyed by genocide come back to make it work in whatever way they can. As my friend Wade Say's, "Cambodia is a punk rock country. If all they have is a coconut tree and a chair they will sit down and sell coconuts. They will not give up."

On another note. Last night I was swimming in the pool at the billabong and saw thing flying around my head and skimming over the pool. It turns out they were bats. It was the coolest thing, yet totally freaky to be swimming in the dark and have bats flying all around your head. Yet another reason I love Cambodia.

More Cowbell

Well the team is gone and me and my friends Wade and Rachel are taking a day to relax at the billabong hotel in Phnom Penh. It is a beautiful day, approx. 90 degrees out and we are chilling by the pool eating good food and taking naps whenever we want. I am grateful for the last 3 weeks. It has been hard to be away from my family, but I have seen many lives changed.

For example the other night I was driving with a couple of guy's from the team and asked them if they were going to upgrade to 1st class on the plane. My friend Mike, who was one of the team members responded by saying no as that would be the same amount as it would cost to put 3 wells in the ground at a village we visited. People are going home thinking differently about missions and injustice, that is one of the main reasons that I was willing to leave my home for 3 weeks.

I am very grateful to my wife, my children and the YWAM Seattle leadership for allowing me this opportunity to do these types of things. Thank you so much. Before I sign off, here is a cool thing that happened last Sunday at. We were in church and singing some good old worship songs with the team and I thought something was missing. So, i stepped behind the drums and for one song, I think it was day's of Elijah I played the cowbell. Yep, I had a fever and the only cure was more cowbell. Good times in Cambodia.

Hot

Welcome to Cambodia, or as I have been calling it, "the sun." It is hot here, but I am not complaining, just stating the obvious. I love it here. My friend Rachel was asking if I could move here ever. I told her that there is nothing that i don't like about this country, and so yes, I could move here.

The team is doing great. We just started on our building project yesterday, so we are a few day's behind due to rain and miscommunication. We also went to an orphanage yesterday and everyone loved it. We played with kids, had lunch together, sang songs and gave out gifts. The kids sang for us as well, it was beautiful. We talked a bit today about culture and how it is so different here. With the Christians here, they really love Jesus with all their hearts and are doing his work, but you can't help but notice the western influence in the church here. The songs they sing, the way they respond to the work or to worship, etc. It looks allot more western than Cambodian. It is scary that when we westerners come over here we in the name of Jesus we not only bring Jesus, we bring Him in the way that works for us.

My friend Wade and I were talking about this today. What would a truly Christian and truly Cambodian church look like? Beautiful I am sure. I am scared though that I may not be able to see it until I reach heaven. I hope that all we are bringing here is Jesus and not culture. And I definitely hope we are not taking Cambodian culture away.

I see this even in the building. We have some contractors here from the Canada and it is very frustrating to do things the Cambodian way as it is very different and does not make sence to us. It is a fine line between doing things differently and teaching them how to do things more effectively. Pray for us that we would be sensitive to this.

Thanks.

$10.00

It is 4:20pm in Cambodia right now and 2:20am back home on the west coast. Today was a very hard day for me. The team that I am hosting from my home church in Winnipeg went to a hospital to do some visitations, bring food and drink, and pray for the sick. I have never had an easy time seeing the poor and the sick, but they are people who are close to God's heart and so it needs to be close to mine. Today however was harder than most.

We passed by an outside hallway, where they keep the trauma and burn patients. I looked over and saw this beautiful little girl with burns all over her backside and between her legs. It was horrible to look at, but I could not turn away. I wondered what Christ would do in this situation and thought that He would just go over to her, sit beside her and weep over her pain. So that is what I did.

The little girl was 2 1/2 years old. She was playing in the kitchen kicking a ball 3 day's ago when she backed into a pot of boiling water. One minute she was just being a little kid and the next her life drastically changed. Why her? Why such a beautiful, innocent little girl? Why not me? All these questions rushed through my head. She was laying naked on a banana leaf on top of a wooden cot with an iv in her head giving her liquid and hopefully medication. I saw her wake up a couple of times and wince in pain, but her mother soothed her back to sleep as only a mother could.

I asked the mom through our translator how long she would be in the hospital and she told me two days because they didn't have enough money to pay for the food. The food was $2.50 per day. It broke my heart to hear that this little girl and her mom had to go home because they couldn't afford the $2.50 per day hospital bill. Trevor, the youth pastor reached into his pocked and gave the mom $10.00. As she grabbed it I saw her little girl wince in pain once again and once again saw her mom soothe her to sleep.

Dear Jesus, this was only one child, one child out of millions in this beautiful country that suffers daily because of the selfishness and dictatorship of one man, Pol Pot. Please continue to heal this nation and bring it back on it's feet. Raise up doctors, raise up business, raise up workers to advance the beautiful kingdom of yours in Cambodia. Please continue to pray for the healing of this little girl.
-Amen-

Darah

Well I am in Cambodia and so far loving every minute of it. Yesterday Wade, Rachel and I spent the day with Darah, a tuk tuk driver. He took us all around the city of Phnom Penh showing us all the non-touristy places. It was so cool just to hang with him and hear about his family, his job and his life. We wanted to go for lunch at a local Cambodian place so he took us to Mekong Island. We thought that it was going to be totally touristy by the picture, but it turns out that the guy who took the picture is also a master at Photoshop. When we got there we hopped on the ferry (less glamorous that it sounds, see picture)


and headed across the water to the island. The island paradice was a bunch of sketchy 6 foot high huts, mostly under water with grass roofs on them. We walked along the littered beach to the huts all the while being mobbed by sweet people asking us to buy their scarfs that they made. When we got to the huts the 4 of us sat down in confusion for lunch.

People were surrounding us the whole time asking us to buy stuff and we almost fell into the Mekong as the floor we were sitting on broke through. We waited for a while for lunch, still not knowing what was going on, but having a great time talking and hanging out with all our new friends trying to sell their stuff. When lunch came we were not let down. A whole fish, ungutted, a whole chicken, a crap full of rice and perfect mangos with salt and chilli. We ate till we were full and also shared our food with 3 kids and a one eyed dog waiding in the river. We all agreed that this was our greatest outreach eating experience ever, and combined we have had a lot of eating outreach experiences. Just one more reason I love this country and the people God has placed in it.
Good times in Cambodia.